Phantom Brave was ahead of its time.
In the PS2 era, it seemed like every RPG (or maybe all genres, actually) needed to go BIGGER. More dramatic, more epic, more serious. Nippon Ichi carved a niche for itself with Disgaea, a silly RPG that tried to be as un-serious as possible. It was more of an episodic anime, full of comedy and parodies. It was in the right place at the right time, and got a lot of attention.
However, Phantom Brave took a riskier path. It was a "serious" story, yet instead of a fantasy epic, it aimed to be a gentle slice-of-life. You're not the center of the universe, but just a person in a tropical archipelago filled with strange and diverse characters. The story is about the orphan girl Marona, innocent and naive, watched over by her jaded phantom bodyguard, Ash. She tries to make her own way through the world, but her optimism clashes when it comes up against reality's cynicism and prejudices. This kind of character-driven story was very rare in games at the time, but is something that's become much more accepted in the past few years.
The gameplay system is also far ahead its time, though it may be still too advanced for us in 2016. There's a lot more freedom in this compared to the usual tactical RPG map battle. For one thing, you can free-roam instead of moving within a square grid. I like it better this way, but I have to admit it's a little clunkier just trying to move where you want. And there's more.... Confining phantoms to objects such as trees and rocks, which give different stat bonuses, yet they only last a limited number of turns in battle, so you have to pace yourself depending on the map. There's so much to keep track of. Yet there's no short-term pleasures like the team-attacks in Disgaea, it's all about the long-term strategy in each battle.
Same for outside of battle, you're given incredible freedom to customize and build your characters; even your ITEMS gain their own levels and new skills. You can even fuse characters/items together to break past the old limits of their potential. It's not a regular RPG where you grind for a linear increase in power, but you use your brain and tinker with multiple systems to gain *exponential* boosts in power. The max level is 9999 for a good reason, not just to extend playtime. Yet this can be very overwhelming to a new player, as unlike Disgaea there's very little indication of what's effective RIGHT NOW, just hints of how godlike you can become later after you've "cracked the code." I don't recommend this at all for people who want a comfortable casual time, and to be honest it's too much even for me sometimes. I enjoy this kind of abstract stat manipulation stuff, yet this game was aimed at someone *even more hardcore* than me.
It's strange how such an accessible heartwarming story was fused with an inaccessible challenging game. It's definitely not for everyone (if you don't like complicated RPGs you might want to watch a LetsPlay instead). But it's bold and unique, and I love it anyway.
